Shut it! / look at me look at me!

Toddler art is drying on a random wall and will grace next weeks post. Instead I'm going to regale you all with the most charming two phrases my daughter has begun to use on me.

Now in the midst of the trying two's my daughter will now shout at me to "Mommy stop talking!" when she is angry with me for something, denying her ice cream when she hasn't had any of her dinner, say, or possibly when I insist on bedtime when it's actually her bedtime. If I persist in talking she repeats it over and over until I zip my lip (a phrase I am studiously avoiding the use of so that I won't be tempted to fasten a zipper to her mouth so she'll zip it herself) Where she got this oh so adorable phrase is beyond me. I've been wracking y brains to remember if I've asked her to stop talking at any given time and I'm not recalling anything.

My pleas for her to use her words and talk to me were apparently not totally ignored. Now, if I'm on the phone with my Mom or in the middle of a task that requires that she is not the center of attention; a place she knows is rightfully hers. I get the yelled demand to "talk to me Mommy! Talk to me!" This one's easy to deal with. All I have to do is acknowledge her, tell her I'm talking to Grandma, making dinner or sopping up the pee pee accident that she just had and she's mollified.

In some cases the Stop Talking's and the Talk to me's are demanded in the same sentence. On days like this I pray to all Gods that the well of patience that I've dug won't run dry, that the words I choose next time around will be better chosen and that I do better tomorrow